CHAPTER 1: THEOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS Table of Contents A: The Ultimate End of Created Persons: The Kingdom of God . 1 1) The Jews of Jesus’ time hoped for the coming of God’s kingdom. 1 2) The New Testament directs us to the kingdom of God as our true ultimate end. 7 3) Catholic teaching confirms that the kingdom is our true ultimate end. 16 4) For St. Thomas Aquinas, being in the kingdom is having the beatific vision. 26 5) Thomas’s view of the ultimate end and his case for it are unsound. 35 6) The common good of God and created persons is being realized in the coming of God’s kingdom. 51 B: Free Choice, Divine Creativity, Evil, and Suffering . .65 1) People do make free choices. 65 2) As self-determinations, free choices last. 66 3) God creates human free choices. 68 4) “God creates free choices” is not absurd. 69 5) In the created universe are negative realities, which God does not create. 72 6) God’s creating is not like any creature’s causing. 73 7) God’s knowing and willing are very different from our thinking and choosing. 76 8) Religious relationships with God manifest his personhood. 77 9) In choosing to create the universe, God permits evils. 79 10) Suffering is part of the solution rather than part of the problem. 80 11) This life’s relationship to the kingdom gives suffering an acceptable meaning. 84 C: The Deposit of Faith, Infallibility, and Inerrancy . 87 1) God’s revelation in Jesus is definitive and for all human beings. 87 2) Christian revelation is a deposit safeguarded by the Holy Spirit. 89 3) The Church infallibly holds and hands on the deposit of faith. 91 4) Fidelity to revelation develops the Church’s doctrine and practice. 94 5) The deposit of faith shapes its own development. 95 6) Propositions are distinct from language; meanings are not judgments. 97 7) Vatican II authentically developed Catholic teaching. 100 8) One must try persistently to hear God’s word in Scripture. 104 9) When biblical writers assert something, it is true, and one should believe it. 107 D: Jesus the Priest: Obedient Son and Self-Sacrificing Servant . 113 1) Humankind needs to be saved from sin and death. 113 2) God sent his Son to save everyone from original sin and its consequences. 118 3) Rejected by Israel’s leaders, Jesus prepares to establish his Church. 119 4) Jesus enters Jerusalem, preaches the gospel, and forms the new covenant. 124 5) Jesus’ self-sacrifice is the perfect and definitive priestly act. 127 6) Why did Jesus have to suffer and die?. 129 E: Hell: The State of Definitive Separation from God . 135 1) God neither intends evil nor sends anyone to hell. 135 2) Hell is a real possibility for human beings. 136 3) Scripture and Church teachings indicate that not everyone will be saved. 142 4) It is unreasonable to suppose that very few people die unrepentant. 146 5) Christians should hope for each human being’s salvation. 152 6) Although some will end in hell, all shall be well. 154 F: The Church: God’s Family and Salvific Agency in the World . 159 1) All members of the Church are called to share in Jesus’ priesthood. 159 2) The Church both is and is not the kingdom of God. 161 3) The Church’s other features are relative to divine-human communion. 166 4) Cooperating with the Holy Spirit, the Church carries on Jesus’ mission. 170 5) The Church’s unity must harmonize diverse members and various gifts. 173 6) Differences that impair fellowship call for living the truth in love. 179 G: Christian Living, Holiness, Personal Vocation, and Evangelical Life . 185 1) Persistent mistakes about morality must be avoided. 185 2) Faith working through love both fulfills oneself and serves others. 189 3) Seeing how one’s life can bear upon the kingdom intensifies hope. 194 4) Success is unnecessary; faithfulness is essential. 197 5) True holiness transcends moral goodness but includes it. 199 6) All the baptized are called and empowered to pursue perfect holiness. 202 7) Pursuing holiness organizes one’s entire life as an answer to the Father’s calling. 204 8) Every part of life should respond to one’s vocation and contribute to holiness. 210 9) Various elements of one’s vocation are obligatory in diverse modes. 214 10) Consistently responding to one’s personal vocation is living an evangelical life. 220 Clerical and Consecrated Life and Service = 1 = I: THEOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS This chapter deals with topics that will be presupposed in treating the volume’s specific subject matter. Everyone preparing for or engaging in evangelization and catechesis has thought about these topics, but they are important and difficult enough to warrant treatment here. While I hope readers will find the chapter helpful in other ways, it is intended specifically to be a foundation for the remainder of this volume. A: The Ultimate End of Created Persons: The Kingdom of God Ultimate end here does not mean the final state of things. The point is not that everyone, whether a great saint of an unrepentant sinner, ends up in God’s kingdom. The point, rather, is that God’s kingdom is the overarching good for which created persons should hope—the good that should shape every human being’s entire life. Scripture and the Church’s teaching make it clear that God’s kingdom is both his purpose in creating and the ultimate end that created persons ought to seek. They also make it clear that the God’s kingdom will be a community of created persons with God, that human participants will share in Jesus’ resurrection life and enjoy one another’s company, and that they also will see God face to face. St. Thomas Aquinas best articulated and defended a view held by many Church Fathers and teachers in the Church before and since his time: that the only blessing essential to God’s kingdom is the vision of God. That view is erroneous, and the error leads to many misunderstandings and difficulties. A sound account of God’s kingdom as the true ultimate end clarifies the truth of faith and solves many problems. 1) The Jews of Jesus’ time hoped for the coming of God’s kingdom. The Jews of Jesus’ time understood talk about the coming of the kingdom of God on the basis of the Scriptures they heard read in their synagogues and the psalms they prayed there.1 “Although the Old Testament never uses the expression kingdom of God (except in Wisdom 10:10), the conviction that God, the God of Israel, is king is basic to it from one end to the other.”2 God is king of creation: “I will extol thee, my God and King, and bless 1. As passages I will quote make clear, the idea, if not the expression, kingdom of God appears in many passages of the Old Testament; on this, see Dale Patrick, “The Kingdom of God in the Old Testament,” in Wendell Willis, The Kingdom of God in 20th-Century Interpretation (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1987), 67-79. For a far richer and better-argued treatment of Israel’s hope than I can offer, see N. T. Wright, Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 1, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 147-338. 2. Benedict T. Viviano, O.P., The Kingdom of God in History, Good News Studies, 27 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1988), 17. Clerical and Consecrated Life and Service = 2 = thy name for ever and ever. All thy works shall give thanks to thee, O Lord, and all thy saints shall bless thee! They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and tell of thy power” (Ps 145.1, 10-11; cf. Ps 93). God’s kingship is permanent and absolutely unshakeable: “Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endures throughout all generations” (Ps 145.13; cf. Ps 146.10). In a special way, God is king of Israel. When he has brought the Israelites out of Egypt and saved them from Pharaoh’s pursuing force, their praise of him ends: “The Lord will reign for ever and ever” (Ex 15.18). In giving the Israelites the Sinai covenant, God formally “became king in Jeshurun [Israel], when the heads of the people were gathered, all the tribes of Israel together” (Dt 33.5). Very often, God’s universal kingship and his kingship of Israel—and domination of her enemies—are linked together: “The Lord, the Most High, is terrible, a great king over all the earth. He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet” (Ps 47.2-3; cf. Ps 97.1-9). Confronted with ongoing evils in the world but believing in God’s goodness and kingship, Israel anticipated his coming to “judge” the earth—that is, to put the world aright: “Make a joyful noise to before the King, the Lord! . for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity” (Ps 98.6, 9). The prophets clearly articulated that expectation: The earth is utterly broken, the earth is rent asunder, the earth is violently shaken. The earth staggers like a drunken man, it sways like a hut; its transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and will not rise again. On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth.